Email Marketing Software
Questions to ask when evaluating vendors

Knowing how to evaluate email marketing software is important to ensure you get value for your investment, and protect your most important asset: your opt-in email database.

Are they white-listed?
Email delivery is one of the most important issues for email marketing software. If your email provider is not white-listed with the major ISPs, you are dead in the water. Ask for a detailed listing of who they work with, and how often they renew their agreements. If your email provider is not white listed with AOL, Yahoo, Earthlink and other major players, then move on.

Will outsourcing your email list management to a hosted email software provider pay-out?
When looking at the economics of whether to bring your email marketing efforts in-house, it is important to consider the volume of emails you are managing, the amount of tracking and functionality you require and your resources for managing email software, vs outsourcing.

How many emails will my organization send this year?
To be realistic about the economics of your decision, first determine how many emails you'll be sending. Until you have an estimate of that number, it is impossible to make an informed decision about in-house vs. outsourced email delivery. In-house email delivery starts to make strong economic sense when you're sending 10,000 or more emails per week.

Does my organization plan to continue email marketing efforts in the future?
For most organizations, the answer is a resounding, "Yes!" Email marketing is fast becoming a mainstay marketing method across nearly every industry. But if your organization, for some particular reason, is only looking at email marketing as a temporary indulgence, you may be better served to stick with an outsourced solution.

Do we have the in-house expertise needed to purchase, install and maintain mail servers?
Although mail servers are far easier to maintain than database servers, you still need to determine whether you have the technical resources to manage them in-house. If not, you may wish to either pay an IT consultant to install and maintain them for you (which may increase your cost), or stay with an outsourced email solution.

Do I want to be able to send very small batches of emails without incurring campaign fees?
If so, using software to manage your email campaigns in-house may save you even more than indicated by the charts above. When initiating email campaigns in-house, you pay no percampaign charges, and there are no minimum campaign requirements. This is especially important if you are considering pursuing permission marketing, where individuals receive increasingly specific messages that you send in smaller and smaller batches as you learn about your audience. Sending small batches of emails rarely makes economic sense
when using an outsourced email service provider. 

Contact us for help on promoting your business to other businesses with email marketing.